Configuring Mac OS X for Interactive Installations

When you’ve created an interactive installation, and you want to show it in a museum or gallery, you’ll need to configure and optimize your computer. Just in case something goes wrong. In this article, I’ll take you through some steps you need to keep in mind when you need to configure Mac OS X for use in a public environment.

Energy Saver

Your computer, display and hard disks should never sleep. The computer should also restart automatically when the computer freezes.

Start and Shut Down Automatically

Add a schedule to energy saver so that the computer can start up before the exhibition begins, and the computer shut down after the exhibition is closed. This is quite handy, as nobody needs to boot or shut down the computer manually.

Screen Saver

Make sure your screen saver never starts. We’ve all seen the flurry screen saver in museums or galleries, and it doesn’t look very professional.

Desktop

Make sure the background of the desktop is set to something that looks like the output of your installation. If your application crashes, the visitors to the gallery will get to see some art, (and not that sexy picture of your girlfriend).

You should also hide all icons on your desktop. Type this into the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false

If you want to reverse this afterwards when you need to use the computer for regular work again, you can do it by typing this into the terminal.

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true

Hide the Dock

Go to the Apple menu > Dock > Turn Hiding On, or press Option + Command + D while in Finder. This will hide the dock so it doesn’t show up when the visitors see your desktop when your app has crashed.

Login Options

Make sure that you use Automatic Login when your computer starts. Otherwise, the start up and shut down schedule you’ve set to boot your installation without any human interaction will fail.

Automatically Start Your Application

Add your application to the Login Items of the user you log in with, so your installation will boot automatically. This way the people at the gallery won’t have to boot the installation by hand. Make sure to remove all other applications from that list so they don’t take up any resources.

Network

Set up your network (Ethernet or Wi-Fi) correctly if your application uses the internet. If you don’t need any network connectivity, you should disable it.

Bluetooth

If you don’t need Bluetooth, turn it off. Your mac may search for a mouse when you boot it up. If no mouse is available, it will ask for a mouse and your computer won’t start up.

Sound

Disable Alert sounds and mute the output volume if you don’t need audio for your installation.

Universal Access

Disable universal access. You don’t need it.

Display

Make sure your display settings are correct, set the correct under scan if you use a TV screen for output.

Dashboard

Disable dashboard, as this usually takes up resources (CPU). You don’t need it for your installation.

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

If you want to enable dashboard again afterwards, you can use this:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO

Spotlight

Disable Spotlight. You don’t need it.

sudo mdutil -a -i off

To enable it again afterwards, you can use this:

sudo mdutil -a -i on

LaunchAgents

Restart your applications after they crash by using LaunchAgents. This is an xml/plist file put in a specific directory somewhere in your Library folder. You can use the Lingon app by Peter Borg http://www.peterborgapps.com/lingon/ to create these files if you don’t want to write it yourself.

Remote

Disable the Apple remote, or pair your computer with your remote. If you computer is visible and somebody brought a remote (yes, there is always that one funny guy that will mess things up), they might be able to start front row, or mute the volume of your audio output.

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Oldskool Comments (6)

Do you also have a trick to deactivate notifications, software update popups and calendar alerts? On ML, deactivating “Show Alerts and Banners” in the notification center works only until the next day.

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